Bipartisan tax reform needed now

If recent statements by Gov. John Baldacci and incoming House Speaker John Richardson are any indication, the leadership in Augusta appears to have heard the people of Maine loud and clear. Tax reform is priority No. 1.

In fact, there has been little else talked about since Election Day besides the need to enact meaningful legislation on taxes, and even with the failure of the Question 1 tax cap, the pressure to do something, and do something now, remains unrelenting.

This being the case, the promise by both these leaders to act with dispatch, to tackle tax reform first, rather than last, and to finally get the thing done, should be applauded. In particular, the governor’s commitment to an aggressive timetable that would enact tax reform before the end of the first month of the session is especially laudable and worthy of strong support by both sides.

It is important to remember, though, that the way in which tax reform gets done is as important in many ways as the fact that it gets done. The means, this time, carry as much weight as the ends.

The reason for this goes back to last spring, and the Legislature’s failure to enact tax reform legislation despite pressure from two controversial ballot issues. What was lost in that failure was not just critically needed relief from high taxes, but the public’s faith in the Legislature’s ability to solve the state’s problems, what little there may have been.

I was reminded of this by columnist David Brooks, who, in an essay explaining why so few members of Congress have ever been elected president, said the following about the partisan political system in which congressmen spend their days:

“The main complaint of voters is that apparently kind and intelligent people come to Washington and immediately begin acting like idiots. Voters are concerned with the state of the nation, but cynical; they are interested in politics but disgusted by how it is practiced. They don’t see why there has to be so much conflict, so many scripted attacks, so much wasted energy.” Couldn’t much the same be said of Augusta?

If legislators have any doubt that many Mainers feel this way, they didn’t knock on as many doors this fall as I did. In my experience, promises to “really do something on taxes” this session were greeted with skepticism and, I can say from personal experience, blaming the other party for the failure went virtually nowhere with these voters, who simply want something done, and have simply had enough with our inability to make it happen.

So what lies before us here is not just an opportunity to finish what was left unfinished last spring, but, if we do it right, a chance to start down the road to redeeming ourselves in the eyes of the public.

If we demonstrate a serious commitment to this issue on day one, by naming a special Select Committee on Tax Reform on the day we are sworn in and assigning to it the governor’s promised reform plan, for instance, that will be one step. If that committee works in a bipartisan way, gives serious consideration to the issue and produces a bill with broad support, then that will be another step. And if the rest of the Legislature, reconvening in January, picks up the committee’s work and moves it forward together, and we walk out of the State House late one evening having gotten the thing done in a way that we can be proud of, that will be yet another step.

And if we don’t? Failure this time would be catastrophic.

If the unspeakable happens, and a bill is never passed, we can look forward to an avalanche of protest followed by citizen’s initiatives to not only enact some kind of tax reform without us, but to begin eroding power away from the Legislature for well into the future.

Likewise, if the bill is bullied through the State House over the objection of the minority party, little better will come of it. Starting off the session with a bruising partisan fight over this critical issue will not only doom the session to months of rancor between the parties, but will also signal to the public that, as a constituent of mine put it, we’re still “more interested in donkeys and elephants than in getting things done.”

So a great deal is riding not just on what we do in the next few weeks but how we do it. The promises by the state’s leaders that tax reform will be done in a bipartisan fashion are to be warmly welcomed, but they must be followed up by committed action by both sides and right away.

Too much is at stake this time for us to fail again.

Rep. Stephen Bowen, R-Rockport, represents Camden and Rockport in the Maine House of Representatives.